Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat weblog has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, info-tech and privacy/confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. The team is David Brophy, Birgit Clark, Merpel, Jeremy Phillips, Eleonora Rosati, Darren Smyth, Annsley Merelle Ward and Neil J. Wilkof. You're welcome to read, post comments and participate in our community. You can email the Kats here

For the half-year to 30 June 2015, the IPKat's regular team is supplemented by contributions from guest bloggers Suleman Ali, Tom Ohta and Valentina Torelli.

Regular round-ups of the previous week's blogposts are kindly compiled by Alberto Bellan.

Friday, 4 October 2013

On
Friday last week, the IPKat reported here
on an announcement from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that it is
seeking public comment on a proposed investigation of Patent Assertion
Entities.However, the IPKat must now
report that this public comment opportunity is on hold until the US government shut down ends.Visitors to the FTC
website will be greeted with the following message:

Unfortunately, the Federal Trade
Commission is closed due to the government shutdown.

The
FTC Premerger Notification Office will be open to accept HSR filings.

All
public workshops, roundtables, hearings and conferences are postponed
until further notice.

We
hope to be open soon.

In
contrast, the IPKat notes that, as reported by Bertrand, the USPTO remains open for the
time being, and readers may continue to email the USPTO their opinions on the
effect of technology evolution on trademarks, previously reported here.